The great man told Kelly that he was well pleased with his creation. “I think the paper has settled down over many years under Chris Mitchell … I think the paper has never been better than it is now.”

Gratifying, no doubt, for editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell, though I doubt he would agree with his boss that the paper has “settled down”. Mitchell is a stirrer. As his new media editor, Sharri Markson, wrote in Monday’s Media section:

“When pushed on the way he chooses and then drives The Australian’s campaigns, and how as editor he seems to set out to shape not only the national debate but the future of the country, [Mitchell] reluctantly admits his leadership role … He executes campaigns and chases stories that other editors are too weak to pursue …”

Chris Mitchell seems immune to such doubts. In fact, a recent study of The Australian’s Media section by a couple of journalism academics asks pointedly:

“In the Australian media, has there ever been another media outlet whose editor-in-chief… feels the need to be quoted so frequently in his own newspaper?”

The study, by Matthew Ricketson of Canberra University and Andrew Dodd of Swinburne, was presented last week at a symposium held at Macquarie University in Sydney to celebrate The Oz’shalf-centenary.

The keynote address on day two of that symposium was delivered by The Australian’s media columnist, Mark Day. It was another celebration of Rupert Murdoch:

“Without his vision, enterprise, tenacity and, at times, cussedness, Australia would not have had the forum that The Australian has provided for us to debate ourselves, our directions, our legal, moral and commercial frameworks…”

All perfectly true. The Australian is entirely Murdoch’s brainchild, for which he took enormous risks in the 1960s. And for much of its 50 years, it has provided a forum for debate. It has broken important stories. It has lavished resources and reportorial talent on issues – children’s and women’s health and safety in Aboriginal communities, for example – that other media outlets have covered sparsely. It still does.

The Australian’s tiresome tendency to laud its own journalism, to denigrate its rivals’, and to attack anyone whom it perceives to be a critic, makes a mockery of its pretensions to being a grown-up national broadsheet.

But I, and many other critics, beg to differ with its proprietor’s judgment that “the paper has never been better than it is now”.

Because, for a growing number of former readers, The Australian’s tiresome tendency to laud its own journalism, to denigrate its rivals, and to attack – sometimes quite viciously – anyone whom it perceives to be a critic, makes a mockery of its pretensions to being a grown-up national broadsheet.

That’s a view shared by Drs Ricketson and Dodd. Their presentation on The Australian’s Media section at last week’s symposium was, unsurprisingly, ignored by the newspaper.

Briefly, they find that for several years after its founding in 1999, when David Armstrong was editor-in-chief, reporters working for the section“were given latitude to cover the paper’s competitors freely and fairly and the Media section enjoyed a reputation as a serious and fair publication”.

That began to change after Chris Mitchell took over in 2003. These days, the authors claim, in an unusually pungent conclusion for an academic paper, “the reputation of the Media section … has dissolved … The number of stories that could be fairly described as the work of a watchdog is far outnumbered by those that are the work of a lapdog, and especially, an attack dog.”

The Australian will bat away the criticism. Most media academics, in its view, are tainted with an unreasoned loathing for Rupert Murdoch and all his works. Matthew Ricketson, in particular, was Ray Finkelstein’s junior partner in the production of the Finkelstein Report, which it portrayed as a ferocious attack on press freedom. And in any case, such concerns pre-occupy only “inner city elites”, whose peculiar obsessionsthe newspaper habitually dismisses as irrelevant.

But most professional journalists I know – including some who are now, or were for years, at The Australian agree with Dodd’s and Ricketson’s judgment. And what goes for the Media section, goes for the newspaper as a whole.

A 2011 profile of Chris Mitchell in The Monthly quoted Elizabeth Wynhausen, one of many Oz reporters who have parted ways with Mitchell over the years:

“He was a tireless strategist whose best and worst instincts were filtered through the same tendency: to turn almost any subject into an excuse for an argument with a bunch of imagined enemies.”

I’m sorry to make this so personal. But as Mitchell told Sharri Markson: “I do think it’s important for editors to stand up and lead their papers.” And Mitchell leads The Australian.

Rupert Murdoch obviously thinks he is doing a fabulous job. But it’s Mitchell, not Murdoch, who has made The Australian this country’s bitchiest newspaper – and for all his undoubted talents, that’s not an achievement to be proud of.

Jonathan Holmes is an Age columnist and a former presenter of the ABC’s Media Watch program.